


Parents

by ClassicRockInTheTardis



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Don't worry they're all ok, I promise the end is cute, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, It's gonna be ok, Kinda, M/M, My smol son ends up happy, it's all good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 10:05:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8745976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClassicRockInTheTardis/pseuds/ClassicRockInTheTardis
Summary: Yuri knew that he had to be strong. Pain wasn't something that he needed to show other people, wasn't something he was allowed to show to other people. He didn't need to bother anyone with the details of his life, didn't want anyone's sympathy. He sure as hell couldn't let anyone know that all he wanted was the love a child is supposed to get, the parents that everyone but him seemed to have. No, he knew since he was a child, he wasn't allowed to be anything but strong.
Why then, was the world desperate to break him down, making it harder each time for him to put himself back together?





	

No one commented on the bruises.

No one needed to, they all knew. They could see it in the way the Plisetsky’s looked at their son, could see it in the way Yuri carried himself, could see it in the depth that haunted the five year old’s eyes. No child’s eyes should be as haunted as his, no child should flinch whenever someone moves close to him. So, yes, everyone knew, and they took care of Yuri as much as he would let them, which wasn’t much. Even as a child, he had too much pride to allow anyone to help him much.

He never admitted to it, passing off injuries clearly made from blows as bruises from falling on the ice. And people went with it, some even believed it. After all, it made sense; the more Yuri practiced, the worst his bruises became. The only one who knew the full truth was Yuri himself, the only one who knew how he snuck out of the house every day to go skating, how his parents beat him every day when he came home, how they locked him in his room to attempt to keep him from the rink. He was the only one who knew that his grandfather was the one to pay for his lessons, that he stole his skates from the rental rooms whenever he needed a size up.

And Yuri lived that way for years, until he was 9. That’s when it all changed.

Until then, no one had been able to prove anything. They knew what happened behind the closed doors of the Plisetsky house, but with Yuri refusing to admit the bruises were from his parents and not from practice, there was no proof. Until one night in January.

Practice had run late, late enough that Yuri knew there would be no passing this off as working after school or any one of his excuses he had come up with in the past few years, now that he was old enough to have excuses to stay out of the house. He stood outside of his house in the dark of the night, the snow of the Russian winter swirling around him. Yuri took a deep breath before starting to climb the tree that led to his window. He knew it was trite, but there’s a reason why people use trees to escape a second floor window: it works. He jimmied his bedroom window open, slipping inside quietly before pulling his hood off and shaking the snow off his shoulders. He slung his bag off his shoulder, letting it land softly on the floor of his room, when a dark shape let out a growl from the corner. Two sets of rage-darkened eyes stared back at him, his own pale ones widening in fear. He felt a slim pair of strong hands grab his arms before he could move, before the pain. All he felt was pain. Pain in his face, pain in his stomach, his chest, before he was falling, falling, the breath knocked out of him as his back slammed into something hard before his head hit the ice and he blacked out.

Yuri woke up in the hospital, the beeping of the heart monitoring machine rousing him. His breathing was shallow, and he yelped when he tried to sit up, his hand automatically flying to his bandaged ribs. He grimaced, hoping they were just bruised and not broken. His head throbbed, and he vaguely remembered hitting it on the icy ground outside his window. Yuri was struggling to pull himself upright when a nurse walked into the room.

“Oh, you’re awake!” she said in surprise before rushing over to stop him from hurting himself, helping him sit up against the bed.

“Careful,” she reprimanded him. “Your ribs aren’t broken, but they are badly bruised. You need to take it careful for the next few weeks to make sure they heal properly.”

Yuri huffed in impatience and glared at her.

“Oh don’t look at me like that, I’m not the one who fell out a window. Speaking of which, you’re very lucky to have survived such a fall. You’ve certainly got someone watching out for you.”

Yuri cringed at the mention of that, desperately trying to come up with an excuse for his current state. He couldn’t just pass this off as another skating accident.

“By the way,” the nurse mentioned as she checked his vitals, “you have a visitor. Careful there!”

He had flinched hard when she mentioned a visitor, causing the IVs in his arm to pull and the beeping of the machine to quicken rapidly. He couldn’t look weak in front of his parents, the hospital staff may deter them from doing anything here, but once he was released…They didn’t tolerate weakness of any kind, hated when he was anything less than a man, even though he was only nine.

The door to his room opened, and Yuri sank into the bed, trying to run from the visitors, turning his face away so that they couldn’t see his pain.

But it wasn’t his parents.

“Grandfather,” Yuri breathed in relief, his eyes lighting up at the sight of him.

His grandfather looked ragged, with deep circles under his eyes, but he rushed over to Yuri’s bedside, dropping into the chair next to it before reaching to grasp his hands. The nurse quietly slipped out of the room, leaving the two alone together. Both were silent for a few seconds, before Yuri’s grandfather started crying softly. Yuri looked up at him in concern.

“Oh, Yurashka,” he sighed, raising his hand slowly up to stroke Yuri’s head, “don’t ever scare me like that again.”

Yuri broke into a smile, leaning into the touch, and letting himself cry for the first time in front of another person. His grandfather continued stroking his hair gently, like how a parent would their child, like how Yuri had hoped his parents would when he was younger and would wake up screaming to nightmares.

“I’m never letting them hurt you again,” his grandfather said fiercely.

Yuri pulled back, startled, fear racing into his eyes.

“I…I don’t,” he stuttered, “what do you mean?”

His grandfather started at him sadly.

“Yurashka, you can’t hide it any more,” he said softly. “I wish you had told me, I could have helped you, I –“

“There’s nothing to help with!” Yuri snapped. “it’s just from skating, I tried to do a triple and clearly wasn’t ready and I fell and it was bad and –“

“Yuri.” His grandfather looked at him sternly, and Yuri felt the tears welling up in his eyes once more. “They’ve already been taken into custody.”

Yuri stopped breathing, the air catching in his throat.

“They…what…”

His grandfather sighed, leaning back in his chair.

“Your neighbors, they heard a struggle and called the authorities. Then they saw…they saw…” It was clearly hard for him to say. He took a deep breath, before plowing forward, “They saw your father throw you out the window.”

Yuri turned away from him, the tears flowing freely by now.

“Yurashka,” his grandfather pleaded, “please, you need to tell me, how long has this been going on? How long has –“

Yuri cut him off, turning back towards him so fast he winced from the pressure it exerted on his ribs. “Since forever, okay? That’s just how it is!”

His grandfather looked startled, as Yuri took a breath before continuing, not able to stop the words from flowing, “When I was younger and would cry, they’d hit me, so I learned not to cry. Then it was about me dancing around the house when I was four, then when I started skating at five. I learned to sneak out to keep skating, probably was the only six year old who knew how to climb out a window, but when I’d come back, they’d be waiting. The past few years, it’s been a bit better, I can pass off practice time as staying after school to work on stuff, so it was just bad when I’d get a bad grade or something, but I came home too late last night and…”

He choked off, not able to continue, not able to admit that his parents had abused him probably since he was born. He was crying freely, bent over his ribs as every sob that racked his body sent waves of pain through him.

Softly, his grandfather slipped onto the bed with him, holding his grandson as he cried, his tiny body bent over in pain and grief for a family he never had.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yuri had been living with his grandfather for over seven years now. He hadn’t seen his parents once since the court battle, which wasn’t much of a battle, once he testified to their years of abuse. He’d had a good life since then; he was at the height of his skating career, his hair had grown out enough to not even be close to resembling the close cut his parents forced him to maintain, he had more rhinestone tiger sweatshirts than he could wear in a week, and Viktor and Yuuri had finally gotten married, meaning he hopefully wouldn’t have to wear a tux again for a very, very long time. He still resented Viktor for making him wear that. You can still be a best man in sweatpants, right?

Money was tight, of course, but money was always tight. Once he started taking in more from skating, Yuri made his grandfather retire, saying that one income was enough for just the two of them. His grandfather put up a bit of a fight, but even he had to admit that he shouldn’t keep working with his bad back. But that didn’t mean he completely stopped working; every day when Yuri came home from practice, there’d be fresh piroshki waiting for him.

Until one April day there wasn’t.

The apartment was dark when he got home, dark and quiet. Yuri knew instantly something was wrong.

“Grandfather?” he called out worriedly.

There was no answer.

Yuri dropped his bag hard at his feet, racing towards the kitchen where he normally found his grandfather, working away in the kitchen. It too was dark and empty. Yuri swore, running towards his grandfather’s bedroom, hoping he had just taken a nap and forgotten to set an alarm or something.

The lights were blazing in his grandfather’s room when Yuri threw the door open. His grandfather lay in the bed, a book spread on his chest, his eyes open and staring blankly at the ceiling.

Yuri stopped dead in his tracks.

“Grandfather?”

It was barely a whisper.

Yuri swayed on his feet before leaping over, grabbing his grandfather’s body by its shoulders, shaking him, all while screaming, “Grandfather!!! Wake up, Grandfather, please wake up, please, just blink or something, fuck fuck fuck Grandfather please!!!”

There was no response, and Yuri dug his cell phone out of his pocket with trembling fingers, punching in 112 while remaining kneeling on the bed next to his grandfather.

“Hello, 112, what’s your emergency?”

“It’s my grandfather,” Yuri stuttered, “he’s…I think…he needs…”

He could barely speak.

“Stay calm, please,” said the operator on the other end of the phone, not unkindly. “What’s your name and current location?”

“Yuri Plisetsky, it’s my grandfather, he, he’s just staring at the ceiling, he’s not moving, please send help please it’s the apartment complex on Central, number 326, the door’s unlocked, please hurry.”

His voice was raw and trembling, his fingers shaking so badly he almost lost his grip on his cell phone.

“An ambulance is on its way. Is your grandfather breathing?”

“I…I can’t tell, he’s, he’s just staring, his eyes are open, he’s not blinking.”

“Have you searched for a pulse?”

“No-o.”

Yuri set the phone down, leaving it on speaker, while the operator instructed him on where to search for the pulse. He slowly took his grandfather’s hand, dropping it abruptly with a gasp, before shakily picking up the phone and telling the operator, “He…he’s cold.”

There was silence on the other end for a few seconds.

“Okay the best thing now is to simply not move the body. The ambulance is on its way, they should be there soon.”

Sure enough, even as she was speaking, Yuri heard the front door open suddenly. He dropped the cell phone on the bed, still kneeling besides his grandfather, as he screamed, “In here, he’s in here!”

Two medics rushed in, each carrying cases stamped with a solid red cross on the side. 

Everything from that point on was a blur to Yuri, a silent, cold blur. 

The time of death was determined to have been a few hours before Yuri had gotten home. There was nothing he could have done. 

His grandfather was wheeled out of the apartment in a bag on a gurney. Yuri didn’t know where he’d go from there. He followed numbly out of the apartment outside, where sirens were quiet but the lights still flashing. The body was wheeled into the ambulance, which then drove away, leaving Yuri with two police officers, one of whom wrapped an orange shock blanket around his shoulders, leading him into the police car. He was given a cup of water at the station, and brought into an office, a nice one, where he was sat across from a frazzled looking woman who was typing away on her computer. Yuri stared down at his water cup, letting his pale blonde hair fall into his eyes.

His reflection in the water was vacant, empty. He barely recognized himself. 

People bustled around him, but he paid them no attention. Once in a while he caught snippets of mutterings about him.

“Isn’t that the figure skating kid?”

“Yeah, I think so, he got second last year, didn’t he?”

“...the Russian Fairy…”

“He’s so small in person.”

Yuri pulled the blanket tighter around him, trying to get the edges high enough to hide his face. 

“Where do I go now?”

It was barely audible, so quiet that the woman across from him stopped her typing, looking up at him in curiosity.

“What did you say, dear?”

“Where do I go now?”

He looked at her, almost desperately, but too numb for any emotion to truly be seen.

“What do I do?”

The woman sighed, tucking a loose piece of hair that had escaped its frizzy bun back behind her ear.

“Honestly, I’m not sure. Your case is...unique.”

She tapped the computer screen with one long fingernail.

“There’s no other living family members on record, besides your parents, but --”

Yuri stood up abruptly, pushing his chair out violently so that it toppled over with a clatter. 

“No,” he growled. “No, I am never, no, I’d rather live on the streets, I’m 16, I can live on my own, I’m never going back to them, never, I’ll --”

“No one’s asking you too, dear,” the woman assured him, holding up her hand placatingly. 

Yuri was breathing heavily, the blanket abandoned on the floor in his outburst.

“What then? A fucking orphanage, where you send all the other kids to starve in the cold? No way, I’ve got an income, I’ll be fine, I can go like with Yakov or something like I did a year ago --”

The woman cut him off again. 

“No, you can’t,” she said harshly. She took a breath, before continuing more kindly, “You’re 16. I know you think that’s old enough to live on your own, and perhaps it is, but legally, you need a guardian. You can’t just go off on your own, the law won’t allow it.”

Yuri slammed a hand on her desk. “I don’t give a fuck about the law! My grandfather just fucking died and you want to shove me off into a home, no fucking way!”

The reality of what he said hit him abruptly, and he clutched the edges of her desk as his knees gave out.

“My grandfather…” he whispered, “he…”

The woman looked at him sympathetically. 

“It’s going to be okay, dear.”

He glared up at her, saying dangerously, “I don’t need your damn pity,” before suddenly turning and racing out of the police station, running as fast as his feet could carry him away from all of that. He didn’t bother to see if anyone was following him, he was faster than any ordinary person after all his training. 

It wasn’t until he was at least 15 blocks away before he noticed where he was actually running to. The rink. Of course. His subconscious wouldn’t take him anywhere else. With heightened determination, he ran as hard as he could, running so fast that his legs burned and he could no longer feel the pounding in his heart. 

When he finally got to the rink, he was exhausted. He’d been up for over 24 hours by now, and been through an emotional and physical hellstorm, running over 10 miles from the police station to the ice rink. It was later enough, or early enough depending on how you looked at it, that no one was at the rink, and he was able to use his key to get in easily. He dashed up the stairs to the second level, knowing the place by heart. There was an equipment room hidden at the very back that no one ever went it, it was impossible to find if you didn’t know it was there, no one would find him. Even Yakov didn’t know it was there, only the skaters, and they wouldn’t give him up even if they figured out that’s where he was. The storeroom was dark and familiar, hockey nets in the corners, and old boxes full of worn out skates decorating the floor. He pulled a couple together to make a sort of wall, just in case someone did come in, before curling up into a ball and falling into a restless sleep on the hard floor. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yuri woke up over 17 hours later. He’d slept right through the day, and checking his phone, which miraculously still had 12% left, saw that the rink was closed and practice was over, even if it had lasted longer than usual. No one would be skating.

He slunk downstairs quietly, wary for any people that might have lingered, but the place was deserted. He grabbed a pair of skates from the rental office, with a used pair being better than no pair, lacing them up without thinking about it before gliding smoothly onto the ice.

He didn’t even think about skating, just went through the motions, trying to find something to hold onto. He listened to the swish of the skates cutting into the ice, finding comfort in the familiar sound. He skated slowly at first, coming back to himself slowly, piece by piece, before needing more. Then he skated like he had run the previous day, violently and without impairment, needing the physical exertion of his body to overwhelm him so he couldn’t think of anything other than his body and the ice, nothing outside of them mattered. 

It was only when he looked up, away from himself and the ice, into the stands that he fell, remembering his grandfather standing there proudly when he was little, cheering him on when no one else would. He fell hard on the ice, rolling until he hit the wall with such force that his vision blurred. He raised a hand to the back of his head, feeling the familiar scar from when he was 9, the last scar he ever got from the monsters, the last scar, all because of…

His grandfather.

Yuri swung his fist into the ice, screaming out unintelligibly. His tears splashed onto the ice, freezing almost immediately. 

Yuri froze as he heard clapping from across the rink, before a familiar voice said, “You know, before you fell you were doing quite well.” 

Yuri laughed with no humor in it, leaning his head back against the wall of the rink. 

“What the hell are you doing here, Viktor?”

Viktor and Yuuri stepped out of the shadows where they’d been watching him, hand in hand, gold wedding bands flashing on their fingers in the sparse lighting. 

“Looking for you of course,” Yuuri answered, compassion in his warm brown eyes. Even though they were separated by the whole rink, Yuri could tell the two genuinely cared, not just the pity that everyone else had been giving him as a child, but cared about him as a person. 

Yuri started to get up, before swaying on his skates and falling back down to the ice as the world spun around him. 

“Damn,” he swore.

Viktor and Yuuri had started running around the rink to where he was as soon as he had started to stand. Luckily he had landed near a door, otherwise Yuri wasn’t sure he could have gotten out without hurting himself even worse. Yuuri and Viktor helped him stand and walk slowly out of the rink, Yuuri catching him as he fell forward as soon as he got off the ice. 

“You definitely gave yourself a concussion,” Yuuri reprimanded. “Come on, we need to get you to the hospital.”

Yuri pushed himself off him, shouting, “No! No, I’m not going anywhere, I’m not letting them send me away.”

He shook his head without meaning to, which was quite probably the worst thing he could have done, falling backwards abruptly and landing on the floor hard. 

“Yeah, that seems about right,” Viktor muttered in Russian. 

Yuri leaned against the wall, steadying his breathing, before glaring up at the two. 

“I’m not going. You can’t make me.”

Yuuri sighed, glancing at Viktor helplessly, saying something softly in Japanese that Yuri couldn’t understand. Viktor nodded, before squatting down in front of Yuri, slowly undoing his skates, like his grandfather had done for him back when he was small. It struck Yuri then how much older the other two men were, with Viktor having more than a decade on him. Suddenly, he felt very young.

His head still down, Viktor muttered to Yuri in Russian, “We’re not going to let them take you away. Do you really think we would have flown all the way from Japan to Russia as soon as we got the news just to let them take you away? If so, you’re even more of an idiot than you look.”

Yuri opened his mouth indignantly, before Viktor looked up at him.

“But we need to get you to a hospital. You did a very stupid thing, skating so hard on your own. It could have been a lot worse, but we need to get that concussion looked at.”

Yuri swallowed hard, before saying softly, his eyes downcast, “Do you promise?”

Viktor smiled, standing up and offering Yuri a hand. He took it, slowly pulling himself up, using Viktor to steady himself as the world once again swam through his vision. He was aware of Yuuri coming over to support his other side as Viktor murmured, “Of course I promise. And this time, I won’t forget.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yuuri and Viktor stayed with him the whole time. Yuri wasn’t sure how they were allowed to, but he didn’t complain. The nurses tsked at him when they determined how bad the concussion was -- bad. Bad enough he’d probably have to remain in the hospital for about a week, just to monitor him for any brain swelling or whatever the hell concussions could cause, Yuri didn’t know and didn’t care. He still didn’t know what was going to happen to him, but he knew that if worst came to worst, he could always run away again. 

Although it would be difficult, what with either Viktor or Yuuri or both constantly with him. He privately was glad for it, not wanting to be alone, but he’d never admit it to them. 

Yuri was discharged a week and a half later, when Viktor and Yuri were both there. Viktor signed the discharge papers, which seemed strange to him, while Yuuri wheeled him out. Yuri had grumbled about that for about half an hour. It was a concussion for God’s sake, not a broken leg. But apparently there was some universal hospital rule that anyone getting discharged had to be wheeled out in a wheelchair, regardless of why they were in. Yuri thought it was a stupid rule, he hated anything that made him seem helpless. 

He trailed awkwardly behind Viktor and Yuuri, his future still unknown to him. He halted as they headed towards what was clearly a rental car in the hospital’s parking lot, not knowing if he should continue following or not. Yuuri looked behind them and noticed that he’d stopped, calling back, “Is everything okay?”

Yuri trailed the toes of his shoe in the dirt, drawing a nonsensical pattern, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his sweatshirt, his hair falling forward into his eyes. 

“I just…” he muttered, trailing off, so softly neither Viktor nor Yuuri could hear him. 

Both men walked back towards him, concerned looks mirrored on their faces. 

“Yuri,” Viktor said, and Yuri noticed he had dropped the -o they always teased him with, but somehow, Viktor still managed to make his name sound different from when he called to Yuuri. “What’s wrong?”

Yuri looked up at the taller men, blinking tears out of his eyes. God, why the hell was he crying so much lately?

“Where are we going?” He swallowed hard. “Where am I going? Where...what…”

He trailed off, not sure how to phrase the question.

What the hell is going to happen to me now that I have no one?

Yuuri and Viktor looked at each other, using that stupid married people telepathy that Yuri hated. 

Viktor ran a hand through his floppy silver hair, saying awkwardly, “Well, uh, we were, um…”

Yuuri rolled his eyes as his husband fumbled for the right words. 

“We were hoping you’d come home with us,” he said, amused by Viktor’s ramblings. “It’s a bit unusual, but the whole situation is. Viktor has enough connections that he was able to get the adoption papers put in without the usual red tape.”

Yuri’s mouth dropped. “A-a-adoption papers?”

Yuuri smiled nervously. “Only if you want. You’d have to come live in Japan with us, and we knew you might want to stay in Russia, but --”

“Yes.” Yuri cut him off, casting his gaze to his shoes embarrassed. “Yes, I want.”

He startled even himself, quickly backing himself up with, “I mean, it’s better than my other options, so -- UMPH!”

Viktor suddenly embraced him in a hug, clutching Yuri’s head to his shoulder. For a few seconds, Yuri stood there awkwardly, before relaxing into it, gently pushing Viktor off him.

Viktor’s eyes were gleaming, tears glinting in the corners of them, his face breaking out into a wide smile before hugging him again. Yuri grumbled slightly, knowing it was of no use. 

Yuuri laughed, his eyes glinting with love for Viktor, and Yuri noticed with a start, for him as well. 

“He was worried you’d say no.”

Yuri laughed at that, letting himself go in his tumble of emotions. He could barely believe the ridiculousness of the figure skating legend. No one would have pegged him for the anxious type. 

The three finally made it to the car, Yuri climbing into the backseat, Viktor riding shotgun. 

As Yuuri backout out of the parking spot, Yuri glared at the two men in the rearview mirror.

“But just because I’m letting you adopt me, don’t expect me to call you dad. Either of you. This is just for legal shit. As soon as I’m 18 I’m on my own.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It only took Yuri 6 months to start calling them his dads.

**Author's Note:**

> See, I told you it would end up being ok. Thanks for those who stuck it out with me


End file.
